I’m genuinely curious. Years ago, I was a chubby young pothead who lived on fast food. Taco Bell, McDonald’s, KFC, you name it—I ate it. Back in college, fast food probably made up at least 50% of my diet. And it wasn’t just because it was quick and cheap—I actually enjoyed it.
But these days, I find myself craving it less and less. Besides being more health-conscious, it just doesn’t hit the spot like it used to. It’s more expensive than ever, mostly bland, and I feel terrible after I eat it. So what’s changed? Is it just part of the enshitification of everything? Have I just gotten old, or has fast food really gone downhill?
Fast food is called “fast food” because it’s fast, not because it’s food.
Apart from that, there is probably no production chain that has profited better from making things the cheaper way than anything related to food.
So this does not just concern fast food, but the HFCS loaded soda you drink, your bread swimming in dough raising and stabilizing chemicals, or your tinned soup made from water, starch, food coloring, flavors, and preservatives.
Just because of the masses produced and sold, any cent saved on a single Burger quickly adds up to a million dollar in extra profits. Don’t expect them to waste that money on better ingredients or flavor, as long as you keep buying that stuff, they keep on making it worse to save yet another cent.
Yeh you don’t like it, sure, but the question was whether it had gotten worse in some way that’s quantifiably different to how it used to be in the past, or if it’s just OP’s personal taste changing.
Given that nearly all fast food recipies changed in the last decades primarily to make them cheaper to produce, you can safely assume their flavor went down the drain.
It’s gotten worse. I don’t bother eating any of it because I make better food at home.
KFC has gotten shittier chicken. I don’t even eat there anymore. I would rather get a rotisserie from a food library.
Wendy’s has gotten worse with their ‘sauced nuggets’. I’m 100% convinced the quality of meat in their chicken nuggets got worse and the new CEO is trying to cover it up by adding sauces as a gimmick.
That ain’t 100% “chicken”
Taco bell has turned to ass. Even their bean burrito tasted off and most of the menu items I see are crazy shit that doesn’t resemble anything in terms of Mexican food.
It’s always been trash …
Both?
Yes it has gotten worse and time is a relentless asshole.
RIP Trans fats. So delicious, so terrible for you.
Can we all just collectively accept death is an inevitability and eat tasty food? This need for perfection in everything we touch is killing me.
Yes death is inevitable but you do have the opportunity to guide how you are going to die, to a degree.
Treating your body like a garbage dump will give you a long slow miserable death as you age as the garbage destroys your body. Eating more healthy can lessen that effect.
Yeah but I want the choice without having to cook for myself sometimes.
No one’s telling you that you don’t have that choice… Just that over-indulging in that choice could lead to heart disease. What you find to be an acceptable level of risk is entirely up to you.
This feels like a completely different conversation to me just wanting fries deep fried in beef tallow again. And that you can’t find these kind of things easily out there anymore as everyone argues about being healthy.
I think enshittification is hitting everything, but it’s probably also that you are old. I find that I just can’t eat the same way that I could 20 years ago.
It doesn’t pay a living wage so the people working there don’t give a shit about anything
Most certainly. When I was young a burger king the food was better and you did not need to say fresh from the broiler as that was default that way. Ironically mdconalds has in some ways gotten better compared to long ago. they made the warming light thing famous. Wendys I would say has kept its quality up the best but still has fallen. taco bell does some interesting things over time but I swear they have invented new technology to slather less and less of their meat flavored slop onto the product. Chicken places have kept up quality in their main sutff but have come out with more and more cheap stuff to stay competitive and cheapened the sides to. Honestly when you had buck stuff and meals under 5 bucks combined with needing something fast to fill your pie hole it was a temptation, but now with many meals over 10 and anything a dollar is now pure trash I find I prefer to miss a meal than pick up anything. Heck even gas station roller stuff is like 5 bucks now.
I miss $1 jumbo jacks that were the size of a whopper…and cheesy bean and rice burritos that had pico and creamy jalapeno sauce…also for $1…now it’s like everything taste bland and is 1/2 the size for 3xs the money. It’s really shit, about the only fast food I’ll even consider these days is the hot and readys from little Caesars, but even those have dropped in quality.
and you did not need to say fresh from the broiler as that was default that way.
Wait, that’s a thing people do? And it doesn’t piss off the employees?
I’m 60 now and am literally a Boomer; fast food has definitely gotten worse. Especially in the last 10 years or so. The foods and processes have been tweaked and tuned to the point that the value of the food hovers just barely above the price and not a tick more.
Health concerns also play a role. McDonald’s fries are a good example. When I was young they were cooked in beef tallow and they were so good they would roll your eyes back in your head in in ecstacy (not kidding). They switched to vegetable oil due to health concerns over saturated fats and they’ve just never been the same.
They switched to vegetable oil due to health concerns over saturated fats
I thought they wanted to make it “vegan” or whatever.
Either way, they took a good fat like tallow and replaced with utter shite.
To be clear, not all vegetable oil is trash but boy macshit will surely use the lowest quality most chemically processed shite out there because they don’t respect the customer or their own product.
You can also trust a corpo to do that.
Genuinely shocking to me how disgusting fast food places have gotten. But I’m also not sure if it’s just my perception
It super isn’t. Pizza is still alright in my experience, but everywhere that has fried chicken tastes significantly worse than it used to.
The big chains got worse since there is basically a cheese monopoly in the US and its products have gotten cheaper to produce and worse quality. The expensive pizza places are still great because they typically don’t source their cheese from them. Can’t remember where I read that.
Ex. Pizza Hit in the 80s was incredible pizza. It’s meh now.
It’s gotten worse, however, I think the perception is compounded by how expensive it is now and also just eating better as I get older. Now that I know how to cook real, delicious food, fast food just seems so much grosser than it used to. It’s a little worse compared to 10 years ago, but much worse compared to the 80’s and early 90’s, depending on the chain. For example, Taco Bell was a LOT better back in the 80’s. You were more likely spend a bunch of time on the toilet later, but hey, give a little take a little.
As far as I can tell, Wendy’s took a dive after the founder passed away, and Pizza Hut took a dive at least 20 years ago.
The rest it seems dependent on location. I often wonder how much of the variable issues of quality I see are result of continued pressure on the workers as capitalism continues to grind them down.
I’m in my 40s… similar to you, used to eat fast food often, and enjoyed it. I was having a horrible day a couple weeks ago, and thought “fuck it… I’m eating at McDs.” It was disgusting, not like I remembered it all.
Deny these parasites profit!
27 years old here, its gone to complete shit. Last mcdonalds I tried was just weirdly uniform mush with barely any discernable flavour.
